


Musings of a Dead Man Walking

by steelneena



Series: CR1 Oneshots and Short Series [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Covers from 66-68, F/M, Glintshore arc, Glintshore spoilers, introspective, mentions of previous torture., some descriptions of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 19:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19183834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelneena/pseuds/steelneena
Summary: Percy knows what's coming. He's know for a long, long time.And now, it's here.





	Musings of a Dead Man Walking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heidzz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heidzz/gifts).



> for the incredible https://twitter.com/heidzdraws because she's drawing me the best commission ever and I love it and she loves Percy and Vex as much as I do.

1.

From the moment that he saw the wounds in the body, Percy knew what was happening. He could envision it clearly, how Ripley and her gang had ambushed the woman, riddled her with bullets, stolen the Vestige and left her for dead. Given the time, and a certain amount of level-headedness that he’s currently incapable of, Percy knows that he could have ascertained the precise trajectories, determined the number of individuals holding his machines.

And then, Keyleth, in a moment of pure and terrible genius, takes Retort from him, and Percy _knows_.

His frustration is palpable, his regret and disappointment in himself insurmountable. So, he doesn’t assess the scene of the crime at all.

Instead, he trashes the place, furious and angry and terrified.

It must be a glorious and terrible sight to behold, he thinks, floating as if outside himself while the remnants of the room crash to the ground. Keyleth’s hand on his shoulder brings him back from wherever it was he’d gone, but the shame, the absolute, awful _shame_ of what he’s done burns deep in his gut.

(Never has he hated her more, and that’s a true accomplishment.)

All the same, his self-hatred is far, far more powerful, for Ripley’d never have been a problem if it weren’t for his decisions. Their repercussions are far reaching. He sleeps poorly for them, sometimes. Others, he sleeps sound as a kitten, and _that_ is truly the more monstrous. He knows what’s inside him. He knows what she left there, that if he looks inward, she is shining out.

They go back to the Debt’s Respite, but he can’t think, can’t focus on anything anyone else is saying; all there is to him is darkness and anger and pain and terror and guilt.

(So much guilt.)

He’s in a veritable sea of it and it’s rushing him over, over, over, until he’s drowning. His lungs can’t take a full breath, they’re so full up with liquid guilt. If it were longer ago, he knows he would have been consumed by smoke by the point. That nothing would be left of him.

And then, the husky, sultry voice, full of manic excitement that lives at the back of his mind and wears _her_ face would whisper. _I’ll take everything from you. First, your family, then your own Self, and then your ideas, and your soul and then, finally, I’ll snatch the Vestiges right out from under you, and then, when you look at me, you’ll see even more of yourself. You’ll see the truth._

 _And what’s that?_ He will ask, though he already knows the answer.

( _We’re one, Percival, my lamb. You’re my other half._ )  
  


2.

He manages to put on a brave face inside the Inn. They talk and discuss and go back and forth over it for such a long while before he’s finally forced to state, outright, what he thought for sure they all understood. Perhaps he hadn’t been clear enough.

(No.)

(Not forthcoming enough.)

They know he was tortured. They’ve seen his scars. But they don’t really _know_ what she did to him, how she hurt him, how she took him and twisted and prodded until what was left of him was a mangled, wounded, limping wretch of a monster. All that was left of the boy he’d been. For that’s all he had been.

A boy.

A boy, head in the clouds, lost in his fantasies of intricate machines, of the unobtainable, mysterious majesty of the feywild, and the mystical landscapes of his many, many books. The library, once, was all the world he’d needed. And then, Briarwoods came and she came with them and generally, he would have preferred to be dead.

She’d made a monster, not a man, from the child he’d been.

So he admits it to them.

That he’s terrified of her, not just on his own behalf, but for the world, because he knows what she can do with the awful, monstrous things that come from his awful, monstrous mind.

(And yet, he still feels compelled to do more.)

He imagines the weapon, and its destructive power and he feels a forbidden thrill of excitement and the immediate flare of disgust. How beautiful terrible things can be! How deceiving.

He’s deceived them all.

(Sometimes, he even manages to deceive himself.)

( _If you knew that was me, would you let me live?_ )  
  


3.

The dragonborn speaks and the words ring uncomfortably true for Percy. He spares only a moment’s thought to hope that none of his compatriots saw his face when the dead woman was discussed. He can feel it in his bones that what the dragonborn said was true. With the lives they live, there is hardly ever an occasion on which such people are allowed to live long enough to enjoy the living they’ve barely begun to eke out for themselves. They die young and brutally, and live hard and fast.

There is no, old-grown-comfort, no dead-of-old-age-in-bed waiting for Percy.

It will be soon.

(It’s why he wrote the letter. Already, that feels long ago.)

He can even taste blood in his mouth, just thinking about it.

When he goes, it will be violent and it will be brutal and he will deserve it.

And then, when he finally goes (he should have gone, long, long ago. He knows it. It would have been better if Cassandra never freed him, if Ripley had her way with him until he died of blood loss or physical trauma, if he’d been left to rot in the same cell as the rest of his family’s bodies.), then, finally, the horror of it will end for the world.

But never for him.

He knows where he’s headed.

(Smoke burns his throat raw).  
  


4.

Vex calls him a better man than he thinks. He blusters, replies in kind. It’s almost _painful_ how terrible he is at real, genuine flirting. Especially when it’s _her_. Percy loves Vex in that all-consuming sort of way, or, he thinks, he would if he allowed himself to. Making her things makes her happy. Bringing her gifts, giving her all his money…if it makes her happy, then it’s worth it. He’d do just about anything for her. In his darker moments, he thinks that he understands the Briarwoods a little better for having known her.

(It’s a terrible blasphemous thought.)

(It’s one of the many reasons why he never says anything.)

She smiles at him, blushes prettily, and he stumbles over his own tongue and turns to good-natured teasing to keep her from thinking about the fact that he’s half as much told her how he feels, and decides to ignore that maybe she’s half as much said the same.

(She can’t love him, he decides, because he’s a black-hearted monster and she’s the world.)

Besides. He’s going to be dead. It’s only a matter of time.

(Days, likely. He knows what’s in it store when they reach the Isle of Glass, knows that it will end with one or the other of them ridden with bullets and bleeding out on a shining shore, gasping for breaths that won’t come as they wisp out from punctured lungs.)

Vex deserves better.

He can’t give her what she deserves. She deserves time and attention. She deserves affection.

(He _wants_ . He _wants_ so much.)

But for Percy, there is no time left. The sand is running out. The gears are winding down.

If he concentrates, he thinks that he can feel his heart slowing, his breath stilling, but then it’s erratic again.

(He wonders what it will feel like to die.)

(He doesn’t think there will be any peace for him, at the end.)

(He doesn’t want it.)

(Not really.)  
  


5.

The airship is his last hurrah. It’s all business, business, business and then, suddenly, before knows it, they’re all making their sleeping arrangements for the evening and he is left alone with his thoughts. It’s truly miraculous how much being left alone with your thoughts can do for you. When he first lays down, he thinks he won’t sleep at all, mind racing, and then, slowly, his thoughts work themselves into some fashionable semblance of an order.

Ripley’s probably got two Vestiges now, plus a number of people on her team potentially armed with his weaponry. They are behind in time and in power, and Ripley is pulling ahead. The only foreseeable outcome lies before him plain.

He is going to die. He might take her down with him, or, perhaps, they’ll do the job for him after he’s gone, but he can see now, for certain, that this is how it’s going to end.

It’s strange that only hours before he didn’t think he could find peace in death, and yet, here, in the last probably hours of his life, his mind settles.

(Percy _does_ want something, and he knows what it is.)

She’s not _worth_ his anger. She wants it, cultivates it, and he plays into her hands by giving it to her. No, there are far better alternatives than hatred. Ripley has too long manipulated him like putty to her whim, smiling at him like a child just learning to walk. Percy is _done_ playing her puppet. He’s done giving her want she wants.

It’s time to think about what _he_ wants.

(Even _if_ he doesn’t deserve it.)

Percy’s _tired_. So tired. Tired of being angry. Tired of fighting all the time, of lashing out against the world that did him so wrong.

(Maybe that’s why he’s so certain that it will be he who dies.)

It’s not giving up, or giving in, it’s making a new start.

It’s a resolution that, at least, in death, he can finally be free of her.

That night, Percy sleeps soundly.  
  


6.

It’s pleasurable to bait her, to call her boring and pointless and ignorant, because it’s _not_ what she wants. Ripley wants him to say terrible things and threaten violence and destruction. She wants him to be invested in her.

He’s not.

His resolution from the night before remains strong.

But he _has_ to take her down, for the good of the world, if no longer for himself.

He was strong and focused on the airship, strong and focused on the beach, and driven more than anything. And through the petrified jungle, he spoke little, thinking and watching and waiting. And then, in his peace with the deal he made with himself, he maybe got a little cocky. A little overconfident.

Or maybe that’s just the price one pays for the fault that is hope.

The image of Ripley and her bickering follower dissipate and the ground explodes out from beneath them. The wind is knocked from him, but he can’t stop. Won’t stop. There’s still time and opportunity. His last mission –

(and if he can’t complete it, his friends will)

\- must be completed.

 

7.

The first time she shoots him, he laughs. He’s been goading her the whole time and he’s not about to stop now, especially not when it seems to anger her. So, Percy takes the bullet in the shoulder and keeps rolling.

He takes several bullets, among other things.

As they pound through his flesh, and he discovers exactly what it is to be shot with one of his own creations, he grows ever more fervent that they ought to be destroyed. As he’s fighting, as others continue to go down around him, he realizes, of all things, that he doesn’t really _want_ to die.

(There’s still no doubt in his mind that he _will_ , of course.)

It’s selfish, Percy knows, to want to stay alive, even when it would be for the better if he didn’t. It’s selfish to want to stay because he wants to continue to have friends, to be with and around them all the time. He loves them all, some in far different ways than others, and he doesn’t want to leave. Doesn’t want to see them leave.

More bullets dig through his flesh. He grins, teeth bloody, because he knows that Ripley’s out of shots.

“Finish him off!” he hears her scream.

He barely feels it as the sixth bullet hits him and blackness takes him.  


Light.  


It explodes around him and pulses into his chest and he sucks in a puff of air and the world – though blurry around the edges - comes back into focus. Pike’s necklace is shattered over his chest. Percy can’t help himself; he laughs. Outwitting her is _so, so_ sweet. From across the crevasse, he hears Ripley snarl in frustration.

And so it begins again. The dance, bullets and spells and daggers all, flying through the air, the glass surface of the island beneath them gashing at their legs and feet for every step they take. Not that Percy tries to move very far very often. It’s a waiting game more than anything else. Waiting for Ripley to reappear from her extra-dimensional hidey-hole like the conniving bitch she is, taking potshots when he’s able.

Another three shots hit. In between, he’s catching bullets best he can. His hands are bloody; there probably isn’t one square inch of him that isn’t bloody. His hair may as well be redder than Keyleth’s by now, Percy thinks.

It’s not enough.

He goes down again.

 

Life seeps back into him.

 

And then, there’s Orthax, in tandem with Ripley. Snarling, moving oil slick across the landscape, the sun beating mercilessly down onto his form, and in this moment, Percy thanks Pelor for remaining with his family. It’s something.

It’s about all he’s got left.

He shoots his gun, but it’s not at Ripley, and he can feel Orthax’s touch on his soul, and he hates himself for it.

And there’s Ripley.

In the moment, he makes a decision. It’s long in coming.

“No matter what happens today, I forgive you,” he says, and finds he means it, and his soul feels lighter for it. He will die a better man than he lived, at least, in this vow. And if that’s all that will be left of his memory, he will take it. His legacy is ruin and destruction regardless. “But I cannot let you leave.”

But she’s gone, and all at once, Orthax’s claws, obsidian knives of the sharpest, thinnest edge, carve through him, rending flesh and clothes, leaving him bleeding heavily from the ribbon-like wounds. They sting with the bitter sulfur of his broken pact.

There’s a reprieve then, and he doesn’t much care who it came from, but Orthax reels and turns away.

His bullets tear into her, but the cloak is powerful. She stumbles only briefly, snuffs out of existence, reappears elsewhere and then-

The first slug hits him in the chest and even before he hits the ground he knows.

It’s worse than a punch from Grog by far, but contains just as much force. He can feel the tearing of his musculature, the puncture of his lung, his heart pumping frantically, feels the warmth beneath him as he is rapidly drenched in his own blood, can’t even cry out from the pain of it, can’t think of anything else, not even-

And then, there is nothing.

He doesn’t feel it as two more bullets sink into him, severing his spirit from his body, and he falls to an eternity of damnation.

 

Percival de Rolo stills.  


Percival de Rolo dies.


End file.
